WWII buffs, what would you say was the more pivotal campaign of WWII?

D-day allied invasion of Normandy: Opened up a second front in Europe taking the heat off russia and is seen as the beginning of the end for the Nazi's

Battle of Britain: If the British hadn't held out like they had WWII may have bee na much costlier and even deadlier war than it already is.

Battle of Midway: Typically looked at as the battle that turned the tide of the war in the pacific, when the US destroyed the Japanese aircraft carriers effectively ending their dominance over the sea and air.

Guadalcanal: my favorite campaign, was the first offensive action the allies took in the pacific, and there were moments where it could have easiliy turned the tide back in the Japanese favor, but luckily they held out.

Stalingrad: Very brutal and deadly battle, this stopped the axis advance and also seen as the turning point in the European theater.

Battle of Okinawa: the last big campaign in the pacific was also arguably the deadliest, this is the one battle that convinced Truman to drop the A-bombs on Japan ending WWII.

There are others surely, but to me these all pop out the most to me. What about you?

Most Helpful Guy

Honestly, it would be Pearl Harbor. Not because we won some amazing battle against overwhelming odds, it's because we got sucker punched and got the snot kicked out of us. Most of the world was already involved, but once America got kicked in the balls the game changed... WWII wasn't won by the allies because of brilliant battle strategies, it was won due to the enormous productive capacity of the United States of America and the sheer bullheaded tenacity of Americans looking to kick some ass in revenge. Once the Zerg storm started it was trouble for the axis. It didn't matter how many supply ships were sunk by uboats, they just kept on coming. The anger rooted in Pearl Harbor is what fulled the charges up the beach at Normandy and the the stubbornness at Bastogne. It's what allowed leadership to say fuck it drop that motherfucker twice when it came to the atomic bomb. Had Japan left us alone, the fate of Europe may have gone another direction. Sure Russia had a kick ass tank, but Pearl Harbor was where the tides turned... MERICA! :p

What Guys Said 22

Hitler would have been defeated by the Russians (and other allies) eventually - they lacked resources and Hitler himself was deteriorating. The Russians would have lost many more people, and it might have taken a few more years, but it would have happened.

While all of these events were major events, likely the most important was the Battle of Midway. The Japanese lost so many planes, carriers, and most importantly, trained pilots, that they couldn't effectively depend their expanded empire. As costly as the Pacific campaign was, it could have been much worse, including a total loss for the US, had we not destroyed that fleet.

@RedThread Rather, I think it's that the Russians were MORE influential than we were raised to believe. The US contribution was huge, but we downplay the Russian's, just as they downplay the US. That kind of patriotism is very common, but as adults, we need to be able to recognize the bias for what is is.

There were three prominent ones. First was Stalingrad which turned the tide on the eastern front, then the battle of Britain which turned the tide on the western front and of course Midway that occurred in the Pacific. D-day couldn't have happened until the luftwaffe was destroyed and we had complete air superiority so I think the daylight bombing raids by the USA deserve an honorable mention. By the time of D-day there really wasn't much left to bomb and the bombers were sent anyway as bait so the escorts could pick them off. Hermann Goering said when he looked up and saw p51's escorting the bombers that's when he knew the war was over. The bombing raids also forced Germany to focus on fighter production and was one reason Germany never developed a heavy bomber

Hard to decide, but I choose Stalingrad. We all know that invading Russia was a huge mistake of Hitler and after that battle the Soviets didn't stop until they reached Berlin.

When analysing a war, of course that everything counts. There are many what ifs there. What if the Americans had failed in the D-Day, for example? Would the outcome of the war have been the same? The whole context counts. That's why I think it's hard to choose just one since a different result of any better could've favored the other side, but my answer is Stalingrad.

i guess iwo jima for a battle, but the most pivotal event was the atom bomb. i'm not too well versed in the pacific. people think the atom bomb was basically just bombing japan, but it was actually 2 of the country's main armories. most of the civilians were actually evacuated. I don't know how much the death radius was, but it destroyed most of the supplies japan had to fund the war

Of the choices, I think the deciding ones were Britain, Stalingrad and Midway.

Britain for providing a vital bastion in Europe.

Stalingrad for grinding the Axis assault into Russia to a halt.

Midway for decimating the IJN.

Midway is my favourite. The story of Lt. Cmdr McClusky and how they, by chance, stumbled across the Japanese carrier group while there was no CAP and the decks were covered with aircraft being refuelled and rearmed seems like something out of a storybook. Three out of four carriers destroyed.

I see:1°-The bombing of Rotterdam and the Battle of Britain made England and the US FINALLY understand that Hitler was NOT the nice guy who was going to defend us against the ebil Communists and Jews and who 'only' wanted to restore and modernize the glory of the old pre-WW1 German Empire.2°-The Battle of Stalingrad led to VE.3°-The Air raids on Japan, destroying about all Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki as final coup de grace) led to VJ.

D-Day. France was done, leaving just Britain on the West, but Britain was pretty weak too. The US came into the war and pushed the Nazis back to Germany. If it wasn't for that, if the US would have lost in Normandy, I believe the Nazis would have eventually won against the USSR, or, at least made a truce to stop the war, but I doubt the Russians would have been able to take Berlin if it wasn't because of D-Day's victory.

If i had to pick one it would been Stalingrad, but in the grand scheme of things none of them really would have mattered to the overall outcome. Germany overstretched themselves everywhere and that was their downfall.Even if they had won the battle of Britain, the Royal Navy would have prevented any invasion. Even if they had taken Moscow, the Russians had already relocated anything important behind the Urals.D-Day was merely taking advantage of the Russians driving the Germans back.

Stalingrad, hands down. This proved disastrous strategically for Hitler, up until that point, the Gremans were practically invincible in Europe. All the Americans gonna bet on Normandy, which was the last nail in the coffin, but the war had already been decided by then. Just look at the casualties.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Sorry, I accidentally clicked Battle of Okinawa. I meant to vote for Stalingrad. Of course all the allies were an important part of defeating Axis, but Russia was a BIG player. The Russians absolutely bulldozed through the Eastern front and created a two front war for the Nazis.

I chose Normandy, since Germany had a much larger territorial buffer on the eastern front at that time. The western front was critical to them, since it was much closer to the Rhine-Ruhr industrial region, which they direly needed for war production, and closer to Berlin.

It may have been Stalingrad, for the Soviet Union put a very high pressure on the Nazis after that.

But I gotta go with D-Day. It was the only campaign where the Americans and the British could actually get some ground to fight the Germans on, in France. I was about to say the Battle of Arnhem, but that failed.

D-Day was truly the thing that put the most pressure on the Nazis, and without it we may not have won the war.

Man I remember reading a book in high school for my English class. We had to pick a book and present it to our teacher. The one I picked had a compendium of different stories of WWII. Remember a scene vividly when a squad of US soldiers fired an RPG to stop a train transporting tanks and other Nazi munitions.

Stalingrad, period. No question. It was essentially the turning point of the war; the Soviet Union's victory there led to the massive destruction of the German war machine. D-Day, for example, was only possible because of the millions and millions of Soviet troops keeping the German Empire busy on the Eastern Front.

Anyone who doesn't answer the Soviet campaign simply has no clue what they're talking about in terms of WWII.

Battle of Britain was very important, but is wasn't really a pivotal event. D-Day was the first major collaboration of the US, Canada and Britain, and was the start of the push that eventually forced Germany's surrender. Stalingrad certainly weakened Germany's forces but I dont think it really had the inpact that D-Day did. The others were mostly US battles that had little impact on the war against the Axis forces.

The Japanese never had a chance provided the USA was resolved to pay the price of victory which their attack on Pearl Harbor and the very competent navy leadership pretty much guaranteed. The most pivotal events were decisions not battles or campaigns. Of those you mention Stalingrad would be the most significant result. The Soviets already had the Nazis beat before the Normandy landings.

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Anonymous

I would dissect WW3 into two theatres. Pacific and Europe. In Europe it is Stalingrad. In pacific it would be Okinawa

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